Oh yeah, I had read about the using serial for debug, I may go this route. I was rather hoping to either try my hand at changing the firmware myself, or waiting on a version that supports mf & hid together or something (read -- too lazy to go buy a cable for serial debug )

Btw Chris, I notice you respond to virtually every post on this newsgroup. That is a lot of time and effort!! I for one really appreciate that!

I wish I knew something about compilers and especially ARM back end code generation. Seems like a 50% reduction (if some of the other posts I read are accurate on sizes) in code size would be pretty low hanging fruit

Anyway, thanks for the response, I hope they get gcc up to speed soon. In the mean time, I guess living without TinyBooterDecompressor isn't such a big deal. I will have to try that first.

Bill M.

Hi bkmckenzie,

There is work happening behind the scenes right now, trying to get the latest versions of GCC working...which will hopefully free up some space.

You could also maybe get rid of TinyBooterDecompressor entirely, to save a bit of space. This would mean that you'd need to erase your Netduino and use SAM-BA if you needed to erase/upgrade your firmware...but it would save another 40KB of flash space (useful for the larger GCC code).

On the USB note...you can actually make your Netduino look like many USB devices as well. It's a bit advanced, and it generally requires using serial for debug and powering via an AC power adapter, but many users do it (including us...our test jigs use Netduino in that mode).

Chris

I finally had some time to get serious about playing with my netduino plus, and was SOOOOOOOOOOO bummed to find out that you have to have a non-free and astronomically expensive compiler to build the firmware in any reasonable fashion. I was wondering why anyone was still buying arduinos, cuz this thing is so much more powerful. Now I know why. I can make my arduino look like any USB device I want. What a major bummer. The development tools are so much better, as is the live debugging. But what a limitation, I am seriously seriously bummed. Please someone tell me there is a way to do this without a $3000 compiler or leaving out half the firmware in the build. Bill M.

Hi bkmckenzie, Humancell:

That's actually the exact solution we're investigating (composite device: NETMF + HID). The additional endpoints need some extra RAM, so we need to figure out how to squeeze that down a bit.

Also, there are some native code issues that we need to take care of preventing non-responsiveness on the additional endpoints.

If you'd like to be involved helping out with the native code side of this, please PM me offline--and we'll make sure you get lots of kudos when such a feature ships

Chris

I've tried PMing you offline via this forum a couple of times, but this web forum seems to not like me. Anyway, I would love to help with the firmware changes, just contact me if possible.

Bill M.

I've tried to add a reply to this topic a couple of times, so sorry if this is a repeat, but I don't see anything ever get posted. Just curious why the device firmware couldn't be changed to make this a USB composite device, and have the device enumerate as the whatever it is USB device it is already enumerating as, and then also have it enumerate as a USB serial device (like Arduino does) which has native drivers. Seems like a USB composite device solution would then only comprise a firmware change, nothing on the other end of the USB connection would need altering.

Unfortunately, as it's a joint endeavor (Atmel+Microsoft+Secret Labs) I don't know 100% for sure. We're _really_ close...but it's that last 1-10% that seems to take forever.

Chris

It's been a while, any word on this?

Just curious about this, Any reason the Netduino couldn't show up as a composite device...like maybe the device it is already showing up as AND a USB serial device? Seems like that would only require a firmware change??

Just curious.

Bill